After let’s-not-even-count-how-many-years, we took a week-long vacation all by our selves and went to Kauai. (Can you see our huge grins through the interwebs and your computer screen? Cuz, yeah, they’re that big.)

But Kauai also has a wild, rugged beauty. The mountains and ridges that section off the island are sharp, jagged and lush. Between the sandy beaches are miles of rocky shoreline where the surf pounds into the rocks, creating sprays and blowholes.

On the western side of the island, Waimea Canyon is so vast and deep that it’s called the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” It’s verdant with greenery and rich red soil and has branching fingers of rivers and crevasses that make the comparison all but impossible.

And let us tell you; the birds are great. We had just arrived on Kauai and were walking in to the rental car office when T-Bell stopped dead for a moment. “They’re not crows, are they?” she said. A couple dark birds were waddling around by the door, and city girls that we are, we just assumed they were the ubiquitous crows we see everywhere. But these weren’t crows. Ubiquitous, yes, but some other, much more interesting sort of bird.

Instead of pigeons, we’ve got the Common Myna, a dark brown bird with yellow legs and beak and thick white stripes on the wing. They don’t fly too well, and they do this silly awkward bob when they hop along the ground.

Instead of crows, there are chickens. Chickens and roosters everywhere. On the side of the road, wandering through the parking lot, in any green space that is regularly mowed (i.e. pretty much everywhere in resort-land). Most of the roosters are gorgeous, with lush feathers, vibrant colors, and plumed tails.

The third ubiquitous bird is the Cattle Egret, an elegant white egret with a peach-colored patch on the back. These egrets hang out on the side of the road with the chickens.